So Record Store Day (RSD) has rolled around once again and, and as ever, it comes surrounded by talk of the 'vinyl resurgence'. Falling on this Saturday, the 18th April, the event was initially created to celebrate the often failing independent record shops, artists and labels came together to give the power back to the retailers by pressing limited, rare, and unique items that could only be obtained by going into these very shops, instead of shopping online, or worse, pirating music. It rewarded fans and shop owners alike, and was seen as Christmas day to record collectors.

With sales figures sky rocketing over the past few years, RSD has grown too, and in doing so, now divides the opinions of many. I've written a much lengthier article on that very subject, but without going into the politics of it all now, I'm keeping it simple, and simply discussing what items have caught my eye/made it on to my shopping list.

Biffy Clyro - Puzzle 2xLP - First ever pressing of this 2007 album that I purchased on its original release date

D'Angelo - The Charade/Thousand Deaths 7" - Two tracks from the critically acclaimed Black Messiah that dropped back in December

Daughter/Warpaint - Winter/Feeling Alright 12" - Both bands remixing the other's track. I like the idea more than the actual remixes however

Father John Misty - I Love You Honeybee Heart-shaped 7" - A nice collectors item, for yourself or the loved one in your life

J Dilla - Love 7" - Sweet track from the late, great producer featuring Pharaohe Monch. Dilla has another 7" out as well, a police badge shaped picture disc of his 'Fuck The Police' number. Expect a hefty price tag on that one

Jagaara - In The Dark 7" - These London sisters impressed when I caught them live last year, and their latest track keeps up the good work

Jay Z / Ghostface Killah - U Don't Know / Whip You With A Strap 7" - Couple of classic Def Jam tracks pressed together for the first time

Johnny Marr - I Feel You 7" - A cover of the Depeche Mode track, with a live version of The Smiths’ ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ on the b-side

Laura Marling - False Hope 7" - A choice cut from the recent Short Movie LP, and also the first Marling track to win me over

Rise Against - The Eco-Terrorist In Me 7" - More politically charged tracks from my old favourites

Run The Jewels - Bust No Moves 12" EP - While only one track on this 4 track EP is unreleased, it's still right at the top of my must have list

We Are Scientists - TV En Francais Sous La Mer LP - 'Under The Sea' versions of 8 songs from the indie heroes last studio album

While She Sleeps - Four Walls 7" - Two tracks from the long awaited sophomore LP from the Sheffield band. Suitably heavy, as always.

The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan 2xLP - First ever vinyl pressing of the album that is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Not my favourite White Stripes release, but Third Man Records always delivers top quality records

William Onyeabor - Atomic Bomb 12" - Yet another reissue from the recently discovered Nigerian funk musician who is rightly being celebrated

Young Turks - Continuum 7" - Jamie xx, Four Tet, Koreless and John Talabot all offer a soundtrack to a 2 minute silent film, and comes with the DVD for your viewing pleasure.

There's plenty of others on offer, with 587 total releases on the day, so there will surely be something for everybody to get excited about. There's also a lot of high profile reissues, but these don't excite me as much the new, original pieces on offer.

Don't worry, I don't expect to even purchase a fraction of these, let alone be afford them all, but it's nice to go in with a contingency plan when my favourite are sold out before I even make it into London.

If you don't mind a crowd, I'd encourage everybody to go and have a look at your local record store, and I truly hope you find an album you love. Old, new, critically acclaimed or even a guilty pleasure, just go and listen to something you've never heard before, you don't even have to buy anything. Find your nearest participating store here.

In 2011, our collective hearts broke at the news that Canadian Post-Hardcore legends Alexisonfire were breaking up. In an open letter to the fans, lead vocalist George Pettit laid things out for everyone to see, as there had been a lot going on behind the scenes, unbeknownst to the fans. Dallas Green had announced his departure to focus on City & Colour, (his once solo-acoustic-now-electric-folk-rock side project) and before the band could even begin to search for a replacement, Wade MacNeil was eyeing the door to become the new Gallows vocalist after Frank Carter had left. What would have been a huge undertaking, trying to replace one integral founding member, quickly became an impossible task when asked to do it twice, and so with it, all hopes of a future for the band soon vanished. In words that have stayed with me until this day, George admitted: "Was the breakup amicable? Not really. Was it necessary? Probably."

Rumours of a farewell tour were thankfully not just rumours, and a worldwide tour commemorating the band's 10 years together started and concluded in December 2012, stopping at carefully selected cities along the way. It began in London, and I was lucky enough to be in attendance on one of the two nights at Brixton Academy. I was only reminiscing recently with my friends who joined me on that fateful evening about just how good it was; how I cradled George Pettit in my arms when he leapt into the crowd and everyone backed off, and also how I almost got knocked unconscious by a crowdsurfer kicking me twice in the head in quick succession. It still stands as one of the greatest gigs I've ever attended, and can easily be defined by the words 'Blood, Sweat and Tears'.

Alexisonfire at Brixton Academy - Farewell Tour

So once the dust settled, what came next for St Catherine's finest? Well as mentioned, Dallas Green continued to tour with City and Colour, releasing The Hurry And The Harm in 2013, before going on to work with Pink (remember her?) under the moniker You+Me, with their album rose ave. reaching the number 4 slot on the US Billboard 200 last year. Wade MacNeil started his tenure with Gallows, and is shortly due to release his second album with the band, their fourth overall. Drummer Jordan 'Ratbeard' Hastings is currently hitting the cymbals in a band called Say Yes who are signed to Dine Alone Records, and also released a range of sauces (BBQ, Hot Sauce, & Sweet Chipotle for those wondering) with the founder of Dine Alone Joel Carriere. Bassist Chris Steele is a little harder to pinpoint, as he took off travelling, and at times even his bandmates find him difficult to track down - his last known location was India, according to this tweet from Wade.

Bassist Chris Steele - Somewhere in India

As for George Pettit? Well he laid low for quite some time. In the letter he stated: "I would say this is my retirement from the business of playing music, but that feels too much like famous last words." Thankfully he was correct to not dismiss future projects, but it was only last year, that he surfaced, announcing that he had formed a punk band called Dead Tired, whose self titled debut album only came out earlier this month. We had to wait years for news on George, and he goes and delivers everything at once. The band also released a vinyl box set spanning their entire discography, which allowed fans such as myself to own their records as previous pressings are notoriously hard to find/even more expensive to pay for.

Through my sheer joy, I have to ask what has occurred over the years that has allowed them to see past their differences? Surely ever member has only gotten busier, so how can they juggle the new work load, as well as reviving the old one too? Dallas came out and said that his reason for leaving the band the first time around was because the effort he was exerting trying to maintain both his bands was killing him, and that he was waiting until he had a nervous breakdown before he would depart. He even went on to say:

"But I have already had those. I was in the hospital with pneumonia. I've lain in the bus crying uncontrollably at night. I was living this unbelievably blessed life, but I had no idea how to enjoy it because I was running myself ragged trying to appease my commitments to Alexisonfire, but also trying to appease all the people that were showing interest in City and Colour. It just got to a point when I had to make a decision. A very hard decision. But after ten years, my heart ... well part of my heart is there, but most of my heart is with this."

So, clearly, plenty of questions remain. After this run of summer dates, what comes next for the band? Well, nobody knows yet. New music and future tours are yet to be discussed, with the focus clearly on these forthcoming festivals. As much as I would love to know the answers right now, that probably removes some of the fun from the proceedings. All I know I can do for now is be thankful that they have returned, and try and catch them along the way, even if that does mean going to Reading Festival once again.

I'm not one for favourites. I enjoy and consume so much music and media that I struggle to narrow down my favourite anything, but Alexisonfire have always been damn near close to taking the crown.

The Joys Of Sleeping have always been steeped in mystery, without ever meaning to be. They’ve been perfectly happy to suddenly appear and release beautiful tracks, before just as easily disappearing for long periods of time. I was compelled to find out more, so on eve of their brilliant debut release, I set out to find out more about the band, and thankfully, I managed to track down members Sam Hatchwell and Dave Saunders to gain some answers.

I haven't been able to find many details or any interviews with the band, so I suppose there's no better place to start than the beginning. Where are you from, and how and when did you guys meet?

Dave: We’re a bit all over the place geographically speaking. Sam originally grew up in Long Island in New York, whereas I’m originally from Southampton. We met in the rehearsal rooms of our sixth-form college in Winchester back in 2009 and then both moved up to London for university. It was a pretty inauspicious start, musically speaking, but we bonded over my Foals t-shirt and a fanboy passion for math-rock, and we’ve been in and out of bands together ever since. Most of our fleeting side-projects have never come to light, but TJOS has always stuck.

Sam: I originally started TJOS as a solo project after everyone went off to university. I was stuck working night-shifts on a local hotel’s reception desk and needed a diversion from the boredom. We’ve always had a kind of musical soulmateship thing going on, so pretty quickly we were working on material together under the Joys moniker.

How does the creative process work between the two of you? Are ideas only thrown together in person, or are they worked on individually and exchanged online, given your distance at times?

Sam: TJOS has always been a bit of a long-distance relationship between me and Dave, so we do anything we can to get ideas to each other. Each track on the new EP was written slightly differently – I wrote some of the songs back when Joys was a solo project (the original riff for our track Reception has been around for years and years) and then realised the full thing when Dave was there, whereas some of the tracks were taken from Dave’s abandoned side-project, and others were hashed out during the recording process. It’s rare that we ever write whole songs over the internet though – the constantly interrupted back and forth seems to kill the creative vibe for us.

Dave: Because of the distance, we tend to write songs in really concentrated periods of time. All of EP1 was recorded within four days, spent at Sam’s home studio in South London. We already had the core structure of the songs down, but most of the tracks were works-in-progress right up to the moment we were laying down the final tracks for them. Both of us are at our best when we can bounce ideas off each other in person.

What serves as the inspiration for you? Do you set out to make a certain sound, or does it just happen naturally?

Dave: When we’re writing, we tend to steer ourselves in a certain direction by using a particular theme, idea, image, or piece of music as the foundation. For ‘Swiftly’ it was the view from Sam’s bedroom window in Brockley; for ‘Jive’ it was the lyrics to Owen’s ‘Coffin Companions’. Other than that, things seem to come together without too much planning.

Sam: The actual sound of each track comes together completely naturally. I think it’s just a combination of Dave’s styles and my styles, which click because we have such similar tastes in art and music. When we come together to write, nine times out of ten we’re already thinking what the other person is thinking.

Dave: Sadly that leaves us to fabricate stories of rock-star disagreements and punch-ups in the vocal booth, but it’s probably easier this way.

Talking of musical tastes, are there any bands/artists who inspire the music you’re making?

Sam: For me, Explosions in the Sky will always be my number one source of inspiration.

Dave: Agreed. Explosions were one of the first artists Sam and I bonded over, and they’re a constant point of reference in everything we make. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve resorted to scrubbing through Explosions tracks to find a particular moment that sums up what we’re trying to achieve when actual descriptions aren’t succeeding. On the poppier end of the spectrum, we take a lot of inspiration from bands like A Great Big Pile of Leaves and Phoenix. With Joys, one of our major goals has always been to unite that passion for the gigantic-sounding and atmospheric with an equal – and not opposing - love for well-crafted pop music.

Sam: The more electronic end of what we do is hugely influenced by artists like Caribou and Brian Eno. We started every morning by listening to Caribou’s ‘Crayon’, which set the tone for the day to come.

It's taken over 2 years to arrange this release, so what happens from now? What does the future hold for The Joys Of Sleeping?

Sam: Yeah, we are a bit embarrassed about that. I don’t think we have been able to come up with a better excuse than “life got in the way”, really.

Dave: That and we’ve got terrible time management skills. And occasional attacks of really unhelpful perfectionism that stopped us from ever actually releasing things when they were done. Our last failed attempt at releasing a single went through 50+ mixes before we gave up on it.

Sam: EP1 is a statement of intent though – that we are serious about the music we’re making as Joys and that we’re not going to let the old habits (namely procrastination) get in the way again. We’re already working on a follow-up to the EP at the moment, and then we’re just going to see where the wind takes us!

Are there plans to perform live at any stage? (Big hopes for this question)

Sam: Yes! We have a live band in the works and we’re getting everything together as soon as possible. It’s never sounded better. The people we are playing with at the moment are fantastic musicians and great friends of ours, so the atmosphere is great. I’ve never been more excited to finally play these songs live.

Dave: We’re hoping to have our first shows together by the spring and if all goes to plan, a tour of some sort this summer.

Who else makes up the band and contributes on the EP? It's a remarkable sound you guys have achieved, incredibly refined and polished.

Sam: On the EP, we have Lucinda Duarte’s backing vocals. Lucinda is a great friend and supporter of ours, one of my favourite people really (she sings on tons of music that I make!) Otherwise, the EP was recorded and produced completely in my bedroom by Dave and myself.

Dave: In the live band, we have our friends Duncan Geddes, Georgie Stott, and Greg Marriott, who we’ve been friends with and made music together for years.

We’re really pleased that anyone would describe it as refined and polished! Sam and I spent four straight days in his bedroom working on the EP on about 3 hours of sleep a night. Surprisingly, we didn’t once end up at each other’s throats despite all the sleep deprivation, although Sam did once raid the kitchen cupboards for percussion instruments. You haven’t tested a friendship until you’ve seen a guy spend an hour recording a five-second sample of a cheese grater.

Who wrote the string sections on Swiftly & Jive? They sound incredible.

Sam: We actually wrote the string sections together during the recording process.

Dave: We always had ambitions for the EP being a ‘bedroom record’ but at the same time reaching beyond the limitations that normally entails, and the string sections were a big part of that.

Finally, what were your favourite albums of last year?

Sam: My favourite album of last year was definitely Adult Jazz’s ‘Gist Is’, so beautiful.

Dave: I really loved the Adult Jazz record too, but ‘Present Tense’ by Wild Beasts steals the top spot for me. I also dug the new Caribou and Twilight Sad records a lot.

Many thanks to Sam & Dave for their time, I'm excited for what comes next, and you should be too. Follow & support The Joys Of Sleeping at the following:

'Top 5 most anticipated albums of 2015' they (I) said. 'Keep it short & sweet' they (I) said. To be honest, it's both good and bad news that I underestimated this year’s releases. The bad news is that it's taken me far longer to type this up, but the good news is that I'm now very excited for the year ahead.

First things first, there's no better place to start than with Skepta & JME, and news that both of the Adenuga brothers are releasing solo albums this year. Skepta's Konnichiwa has been slated a March 1st release, while JME's album has been confirmed, but the title and release date remains a mystery. All I know is that the two grime bastions aren't just up there with my favourite grime MCs, they're up there with my most respected artists, and their work rate cannot be faulted.

After 8 long years Modest Mouse are back with Strangers To Ourselves. As excited as I am, I’m remain a bit hurt after they cancelled their 2013 UK tour to focus on the album, and it still took almost 2 years to come. Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait.

May 2015 be the year that Despot finally releases his debut album? I’ve got no reason to believe it will, but I still find myself living in hope. Fellow New York rapper Heems has confirmed his debut solo album EAT PRAY THUG however, so that should keep me going.

I’m praying that Jamie xx finally blesses us with an album after consistently putting out great singles like ‘Sleep Sound’, ‘Far Nearer’ and ‘All Under One Roof Raving’. Hopefully his work on the new album with The xx doesn’t distract him too much, and finds time for both.

The National finally finished their Trouble Will Find Me tour cycle at The O2 in November, and mentioned that 2015 will be a quieter year for the band. Is it wishful thinking that they might have something new out by the end of the year?

Title Fight’sHyperview is out in February, and they've been working with Will Yip which is always good news. Citizen have also been in Studio 4 working on their sophomore LP, so hopefully the Neve board works it’s magic once more.

Chance The Rapper has promised a free album Surf in 2015, but it’ll be interesting to see exactly what form the project takes, and how much the record focuses on his band The Social Experiement and trumpet player Donnie Trumpet.

Father John Misty has already teased us with ‘Bored In The USA’ and the brilliantly named I Love You, Honeybear is set to follow on 10th February. He featured on Kid Cudi’s 2013 track ‘Young Lady’, and with any luck, we may finally see the release of the long anticipated Man On The Moon III from Cudi this year.

Frank Ocean has been working on the follow up to the critically acclaimed Channel Orange and so far we know he’s been working with Lil B and a string of producers, but not much else. I predict a him pulling a Beyonce at some stage and releasing it with no prior warning.

Kanye West’s song ‘Only One’ with Paul McCartney, which was released on New Year’s eve, is stated to be the first of a number of collaborations between the two, and they may well see the light of day on West’s next album. Pusha T, who joined Kanye on 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, is also back with King Push, but no release date has yet been announced. Kendrick Lamar, who subsequently collaborated with Pusha T on the standout track ‘Nosetalgia’ , is also back in 2015, and drove the internet into a frenzy following his performance of an as of yet untitled track on the final episode of The Colbert Report. The world expects big things to follow on from good kid, m.A.A.d city, and I’m sure he won’t disappoint.

BADBADNOTGOOD & Ghostface Killah both refuse to rest on their laurels despite releasing III & 36 Seasons respectively in 2014, and have been working together on Sour Soul. Big news coming from the album is that the track ‘Ray Gun’ features MF Doom, and reunites the DOOMSTARKS duo, prompting further rumours that the long awaited album may see the light of day this year.

Jai Paul is speculated to be working on his debut album (we’ll leave the 2013 leak alone for now), and that’s great news for everybody. Without official confirmation though, I’ll just keep playing ‘BTSTU’ and ‘Jasmine’ which somehow still sound great.

An album which may have started as a joke, but has become very serious is Meow The Jewels, the Run the Jewels remix album that uses nothing but cat noises for music. It went on to raise $65K on kickstarter, and I was one of the pledgers. With a raft of producers onboard, including Dan The Automator, Boots, Alchemist and Skywlkr amongst others, it may sound stupid, but it could be great. Also, Run The Jewels 3 has been confirmed, which may just be slightly more important that it’s feline related sibling. If Killer Mike & El-P continue to release yearly RTJ albums, they may well become more celebrated than Christmas.

Until The Ribbon Breaks have announced their debut album, and the Cardiff band have been of interest to me since I first heard ‘Job Well Done’ from the first RTJ album.

Big Noble, a new instrumental project from Interpol's Daniel Kessler, have an album coming out, as does Lieutenant, aka Foo Fighter’s bassist Nate Mendel. It will be interesting to see what results from members of some of my favourite bands. On that topic, Explosions In The Sky have promised to release a new studio album, which is fantastic news. Having recently focuses on soundtracks for the films Prince Avalanche, Lone Survivor and Manglehorn, I cannot wait for the follow up to Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, as I feel they best tell their own stories with their music, as opposed to orchestrating the events of somebody else.

Doomtree, the Minneapolis hip hop collective, are releasing a new album. Their last group cut, No Kings was well received, and to know that P.O.S is making music again after health concerns over the past few years is great news.

I almost forget to mention that The Libertines are rumoured to record new music once again, now that Pete Doherty has completed a stint in rehab. We’ll wait and see about this one, the band has a remarkably turbulent history so only time will tell.

Earl Sweatshirt has completed his next album, Purity Ring are set to follow up to Shrines, Jose Gonzalez is back with his first solo album since 2007, and Radiohead are alleged to be working on new music. Faith No More and Tool are also both set to release new music after many years silent. Liam Frost, one of my favourite troubadours, said to on twitter yesterday that he too hopes to have an album out this calender year.

Also on the cards: The Dead Weather, The Strokes, Giorgio Moroder, Mount Eerie, School of Seven Bells, A Place To Bury Strangers, Tame Impala/Pond, Will Butler from Arcade Fire, and The Prodigy.